Havat HaChaim · Golan Heights · Israel

Amitai Elon

A guide, a father, and the hill they call home.

I am Amitai, though most call me Tai. For twelve years I have walked Christians through this land as a licensed Israeli guide, from the shore of the Galilee up into the Golan, opening the places where the Book still breathes. I farm 33 dunams of private land in Natur, on the southern Golan Heights. I am a husband and a father of three. This page is where I tell you who I am, what I do, and why I do it.

My Philosophy

Why I Do What I Do

I do not believe the land is a backdrop to the Bible. I believe the land is the Bible, still standing. When I put my hand on a stone in the Golan, I am touching the same ground the prophets walked, the same hills that heard the same prayers. That is why I read every word, the scripture and the history, slowly and with reverence. I care about craft, about truth, about getting it right, because this is holy work and the people who travel here deserve nothing less.

I do not rush across this land. I linger, I listen, I learn. The longer I live here, the more certain I am that the Book was never meant only to be read. It was meant to be walked, and prayed, and lived. That is the whole of my work. I take people to the places where heaven once touched the earth, and I let the ground do the speaking.

עַל־חוֹמֹתַיִךְ יְרוּשָׁלִַם הִפְקַדְתִּי שֹׁמְרִים
"On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent."
Isaiah 62:6

Those watchmen are real to me. They are not a metaphor. They are the people who pray for this land from the far ends of the earth, and they are the reason I can keep climbing this hill on the mornings my own strength runs out.

Notes from the Golan

The Land and the Work

The Farm of Life

From October 7 onward, even through our own hardest season, the farm gave itself to a calling larger than tourism. We open our gates to survivors of the Nova festival and to soldiers, families, and wounded souls across Israel who carry the trauma of this war.

We hold gatherings of healing here. The quiet of the Golan, the open sky, and the company of others who understand begin to mend what the violence tore. That is the truest thing this land does. It heals.

An evening gathering beneath the great dome at Havat HaChaim, with bunting, benches, and families on the grass
An evening gathering beneath the dome · Havat HaChaim

Walking the Land

My father passed through a dying season that I lived close to. I played the blessing over him. That experience changed how I see this soil and the people who walk on it. Every path I guide, every stone I point out, carries that weight of blessing and passing time.

To walk the Land is to walk with the people who came before. We do not hurry. We linger, we listen, and we learn.

שַׁאֲלוּ שְׁלוֹם יְרוּשָׁלִָם
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May they prosper who love you."
Psalm 122:6
My Family

The Ones I Build For

Everything I build, I build for them. Shira and I are raising our three children on this hill, in the open air, under a sky that turns gold every evening over the valley. The farm is not first a business to us. It is a home, and a table we keep setting for more people.

Tai's three children together at the farm, the older two kissing the cheeks of the youngest
Tai cheek to cheek with his young daughter, both smiling, on a winter day at the farm
Tai and his wife Shira cheek to cheek, smiling, with the turquoise water of the Dead Sea behind them

My wife, Shira

Shira Binetski Averbuch is a writer, a painter, and a certified naturopath, one of the pioneers of the metabolic approach in Israel. She studied English literature and philosophy, and she pours the same reverence into her work that I try to carry into mine. Where I walk people through the land, she walks women through the seasons of their own lives.

Her book, The Moon Within, is a journey into menopause that asks a woman to stop, turn inward, and discover that age is not an ending, it is an opening. It joins ancient feminine wisdom to a modern understanding of the body. It is, like everything she does, an act of care.

Read about The Moon Within

Our Christian Friends

This friendship is our oxygen. It is the stream of life that has carried us through nights I cannot put into words.

I need to say this plainly, because it is one of the truest things I know. In the hardest hour this land has seen since 1948, it was our Christian friends around the world who held us up. You did not send only words. You sent your prayers, your love, your standing-with-us when the ground itself was shaking.

When my own arms grew heavy, yours were the hands underneath them. A wall of watchmen, scattered across New Zealand and South Africa, Germany and Alabama and Kansas City, praying the same prayer at the same hour over this one small piece of earth. You have blessed us, and the blessing has come back to you, the way it always does. I do not take it lightly. I never will.

"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken."
Ecclesiastes 4:9, 10, 12

That is what you have been to us. The hand that lifts up the one who has fallen. The third cord that holds when two would break. We carry your names in our hearts every day from the Golan, and we pray for you the way you pray for us.

Everything in One Place

From the Golan to the World

Every part of my work, all in one place. Choose where you would like to go.

Holy Land Tours

Christian and biblical tours from the Galilee to Jerusalem. Pilgrimage, Bible study, church groups, and adventure, with a licensed guide who lives on the land.

See the journeys

Walking into the Pages

The site-by-site teaching library behind every tour, from Dan to Beersheba. Full passages, geography, the living characters, and one Hebrew word for each place.

Download the book (PDF)
Open the Site Library

The Map of the Pages

All sixty five holy sites glowing on one map of the land, with a close map of Jerusalem and her seventeen pages. Tap any light and walk into its page.

Open the Map

The People of the Pages

87 lives, searchable. Who they were, what they were actually after, and how meeting God changed them. Every one linked to exactly where we met them: Peter in Capernaum, Ruth in a barley field, Ezekiel on a canal bank in Iraq.

Meet them · PDF

The NIPs

A NIP is the opposite of a VIP. Not Important People, and the God who keeps choosing them: Ruth of Moab, the eighth son nobody called in, Jeremiah in the mud, Ezekiel son of dust, John who traded the priesthood for camel hair, and the whole gallery around Yeshua.

Read the teaching

Three Years by the Sea

The Galilee ministry in chronological order with every scripture in full: the cliff at Nazareth, the fishermen, the sermon on the hill, the storm, the bread, Caesarea Philippi, and breakfast on the shore.

Read the three years

Up to Jerusalem

The last journey of Yeshua told in chronological order with every scripture in full: from the Galilee down through Jericho, Palm Sunday, the tables, the Last Supper, the cross, the empty tomb, and fire on the southern steps.

Read the story in order

Let's Learn Hebrew

You already speak more Hebrew than you think. A first lesson built to be remembered: the words hiding in English, the letters as pictures, the three-letter root, and the place names that are sentences.

Start the lesson

You Are in the Pages

A teaching from the words of Yeshua on how to read the Book and find yourself inside it. The Jonah in me, the Peter in me, the Christ in me, built from His own sentences.

Read the teaching

The Daily Page

One page a day, sixty five days through the whole land. Each morning a new holy site opens by itself: the Hebrew word, the question, and the prayer.

Open Today's Page

Golan Tours

An eight-day journey along Israel's northern border, run from the farm. History, faith, food, and the land itself, with a licensed guide who lives on it.

See the journey

Pray the Land

A Christian ministry. The Wall of Watchmen: weekly first-person prayer letters from the Golan, and a growing worldwide wall of people praying for Israel.

Visit the website ↗

Am Echad · עם אחד

A private weekly letter to the Jewish family, "one people." A Hebrew word, a place, and a verse from the Land, about belonging over fear.

Read the letters ↗

Bar & Bat Mitzvah in Israel

A meaningful coming-of-age journey on the land, guided personally, so the milestone is rooted where the story began.

See more ↗

Natur Eco-Energy Hub

The farm's vision for the future: an agrivoltaic living showroom on the Golan, where working the land and clean energy meet.

Visit the hub ↗

About Me

The story behind it all: a guide, a father, and a farmer on the Golan, and why this land is the whole of my work.

Read my story